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Canwest News Service
An Oscar-winning scriptwriter and director appears to be updating his Twitter account from inside prison, where he is serving time for manslaughter. Roger Avary, who received an Academy Award for Pulp Fiction, is posting daily tweets with grim, sometimes poignant tales of prison life. Avary was sentenced to serve a year behind bars in October after admitting to causing a car crash that killed his passenger and injured his wife.
Since then the @avary account on Twitter has been updated more than 20 times with tweets apparently chronicling his days inside Ventura County Jail in California.
While the authenticity of the account has not been verified, friend and former colleague Neil Gaiman recently posted a tweet identifying the tweeter as the incarcerated Avary. He wrote: "It's riveting, horrible strange. Jail in 140 character lumps."
Avary's tweets, if genuine, point to a grinding prison regime enlivened by occasional crises. Some examples: – "A ball of heroin tar is found on an inmate. The guards react lightning-fast, locking down the facility and 'rolling up' those responsible." – "Night falls, and the only real activity is an endless recounting of the terrible and pointless events that brought us all to this sad place." – "The breakfast oatmeal comes in large sacks with a picture of a horse on them and labelled 'Not intended for human consumption.' " – "The coffee can used for ashes accidentally catches fire and a plume of smoke bellows, causing Control to react as if a riot has erupted." – "Sickness spreads throughout the facility like brush fires, and #34 is helpless to avoid the outbreak and inevitable infection."
It is not certain how Avary is posting the messages, although most are marked as being sent "from web," indicating he may have occasional access to a computer with an Internet connection inside prison.
As well as working on Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Avary directed the romantic comedy The Rules of Attraction and the 1994 thriller Killing Zoe. Born in Flin Flon, Man., Avary was raised in Arizona and then moved to Los Angeles.
A long-time collaborator with Tarantino, he worked on the director's first unfinished film My Best Friend's Birthday and was later recommended by Tarantino to filmmaker Tony Scott. Tarantino has thus far been mum on his friend's case.
The Avary account now has over 12,000 followers, including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Milla Jovovich and Canadian actor Jay Baruchel.
